Estudio NU Opens a Brick-Vaulted Buenos Aires PH onto a White Courtyard Stair and Rooftop Terrace

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This article covers topics related to Architecture, Landscape Design, Open Building, Building Design, Latin American Houses. In Coghlan, Buenos Aires, an 80 m² PH renovation exposes its brick vaults, whitens what is new, and lets a courtyard stair carry daily life to the roof.

In Coghlan, Buenos Aires, an 80 m² PH renovation exposes its brick vaults, whitens what is new, and lets a courtyard stair carry daily life to the roof.

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UNI Editorial published Blog under Architecture, Landscape Design on Oct 11, 2026

The PH, short for propiedad horizontal, is one of Buenos Aires' most familiar housing types: a long, narrow unit in a subdivided building, usually reached through a passage, often lit by a patio, and almost always carrying decades of layered alterations. Estudio NU, with Carla Scuticchio as lead architect, took on one of these in Coghlan and completed PH Juana in 2024. At 80 m², it is a small project. Its ambitions are not.

What makes PH Juana worth your attention is how plainly it separates two vocabularies. Exposed brick vaults and walls carry the weight of the old building. White planes, timber joinery and black cabinetry mark the new work. Instead of blending the two, the architects let them sit next to each other and argue a little. The real protagonist, though, is the courtyard: a planted white room with a sculpted concrete stair that turns a single-level unit into a house with a roof garden.

From a Brick Street Front to a Vaulted Hall

Brick street facade with a tall translucent panel door and a blurred pedestrian walking past under a tree canopy

Entry hall with a vaulted exposed brick ceiling, white walls, a small window and bags hanging on a wall hook beside the door

Living room with exposed brick vaulted ceiling opening through sliding glass to a planted white courtyard in afternoon sun

The street facade gives little away. A tall translucent door set into brick filters daylight in and keeps views out, which suits a PH, where the public face is usually just a slot in a shared wall. Behind it, the entry hall gets its character from the brick vault overhead, while the white walls stay deliberately quiet.

The sequence works because it compresses before it releases. You pass through a modest, vaulted hall and arrive at a living room where the same brick ceiling meets a wall of sliding glass and a sunlit courtyard. This is a familiar strategy in Buenos Aires houses. Here it has been sharpened, not reinvented.

Living Under the Vault

Living area with exposed brick vaulted ceiling, a glazed bathroom doorway and a grey sofa lit by daylight from a skylight

Sofa and glass-top coffee table facing a sunlit patio with a white stair, a fiddle-leaf fig and dappled shadows

Open sliding glass door linking two plywood lounge chairs to a white patio and kitchen island, with leaf shadows on the floor

The brick vaults read as the inherited structure of the building, and Estudio NU treats them as found ornament. Nothing is plastered over or hidden behind a dropped ceiling. That restraint gives the living area texture without decoration, and the warm masonry balances the cool white surfaces below.

A skylight brings light down into the deeper part of the plan, which matters in a unit with only one real outdoor face. The furniture stays low, with a grey sofa, plywood lounge chairs and a glass-top table, so the vault keeps its presence and the eye travels out toward the patio.

A Kitchen That Doubles as a Library

Two people stand at a timber kitchen island with open book shelves, beneath an exposed brick ceiling and black cabinetry

Kitchen island with wood base, open bookshelf and two black stools, facing a sliding glass door open to the patio

Person standing at the kitchen counter before white cabinets and a dark panel wall, with a potted plant on the bookshelf end

The kitchen island is the most hardworking object in the house. Its timber base carries open bookshelves at one end, so cooking, reading and gathering happen around the same piece. In 80 m² that kind of overlap is not a stylistic choice. It is how the plan finds room for more than one kind of life.

Black cabinetry and a dark panel wall give the kitchen a firm backdrop against the white and brick. The island faces the sliding doors to the patio, which means whoever is cooking looks outside rather than at a wall. It is a small decision with a large effect on how the house feels to live in.

Joinery as Architecture

Built-in white desk with overhead cabinets and a black office chair beneath the brick vault, with a trailing plant at the side

Interior with exposed brick vaulted ceiling, dark cabinet tower, built-in desk and kitchen island opening to a sunlit courtyard

White concrete staircase with storage panels beneath, a cat on the steps and climbing vines on the wall behind

Estudio NU solves much of the program with built-ins rather than walls. A white desk with overhead cabinets sits under the vault, a dark cabinet tower anchors one side of the main room, and even the exterior stair is put to work with storage panels tucked beneath its flights.

We think this is the smartest move in the project. Each piece of joinery does the job a partition would do: it defines a zone, hides clutter and frames a view, while the space stays continuous from the entry to the courtyard. It is the logic of a well-designed boat applied to a Buenos Aires PH.

Bathrooms Lit from Above

Shower with white stick tiles and a hanging pothos, sunlight casting hard shadows beneath an exposed brick wall and glass panel

Small bathroom with white tile, a glass shower screen and an oval basin, lit by a skylight cutting through brick

The wet rooms keep the same two-language approach at a smaller scale. White stick tiles and glass screens sit against exposed brick, and skylights cut through the masonry to throw hard daylight across the walls. A hanging pothos in the shower is a staging detail, but it hints at the intent: even the tightest rooms should feel like they belong to the garden.

The Glass Edge Between Kitchen and Patio

Patio with concrete stairs, a leafy tree and dappled sunlight, seen past an open sliding door and a potted fiddle-leaf fig

Seated man seen through the glass doors of the kitchen from the sunlit patio, with tree leaves hanging overhead

View down from above onto a sliding glass door and paving, dappled with leaf shadows from a courtyard tree

Large sliding glass doors make up the whole courtyard face of the interior. When they are open, the patio and the kitchen act as a single room, and leaf shadows from the courtyard tree move across both floors. Seen from above, the paving and the door track form one continuous white surface.

This is where the project gains space it does not technically have. The courtyard is small, but by treating it as the main room and the interior as its covered extension, the architects make the whole house feel larger than its footprint.

A Stair Built Like a Sculpture

White concrete stair rising along a courtyard wall, with a woman and cat descending under leafy tree shadows

Courtyard with white stair and sliding glass doors, a woman bending to a cat on the steps under leafy branches

Woman in black walking down the white courtyard stair past large tropical leaves, with a seated man visible through the glass doors

The white concrete stair is the image most people will remember. It rises along the courtyard wall in a single, clean fold, set against climbing plants and large tropical leaves. In many PH units, getting to the roof means a steel ladder or a cramped back stair. Here, the route becomes the centerpiece of the house.

Placing the stair outdoors also frees the interior entirely. No square meter of the 80 is spent on vertical circulation inside. The courtyard absorbs that job and becomes richer for it.

Built-In Benches and an Inhabited Courtyard

Woman sitting with a cat on a built-in white bench in a courtyard, dappled leaf shadows across the paving

Woman with a braid sits on a white built-in bench holding a cat beside a glass door in dappled sun

View through glass doors to a white exterior staircase, where a man touches the wall and a cat sits nearby

A white built-in bench runs along the courtyard edge beside the glass doors, giving the patio a place to sit that needs no furniture. Leaf shadows break up the white surfaces through the day, so the brightness never turns harsh or sterile.

The photographs fill the courtyard with residents and a cat, and that is fair: the space is clearly designed for occupation, not display. The wall, the bench and the steps all invite you to touch them, lean on them and linger.

Plans and Drawings

Ground floor plan drawing with labeled rooms including patio, living room, kitchen, bathroom, main bedroom and entry, furnished and with figures

Rooftop terrace plan drawing showing a paved walkable deck, a skylight, a green roof strip, a round table, loungers and a tree

Exploded axonometric drawing lifting the terrace and corrugated roof off a floor of living room, bedroom, kitchen and a courtyard tree

The ground floor plan shows how compact the arrangement is: entry, living room, kitchen, bathroom and main bedroom all organized around the patio. The roof plan reveals the second half of the project, a walkable paved deck with a skylight, a strip of green roof, space for a table and loungers, and room for a tree.

The exploded axonometric makes the layering explicit, lifting the terrace and a corrugated roof off the floor below. Read together, the drawings show a house that grows upward through its courtyard, turning a single-level PH into a two-level outdoor experience.

Why This Project Matters

Buenos Aires has thousands of PH units in various states of neglect, and they make up a large part of the city's most livable housing stock. PH Juana shows that renovating one does not require erasing its history or adding square meters. Exposing the brick, adding precise joinery and reorganizing circulation around the courtyard yield a home that feels generous at 80 m².

The broader lesson concerns where you spend your design effort. Estudio NU puts it into a few elements, the island, the built-ins and above all the stair, and keeps everything else calm. For anyone working on small urban renovations, that discipline is the transferable idea: let the old structure supply character, let the new work supply function, and give the outdoor room the best piece of architecture in the house.

PH Juana by Estudio NU (lead architect Carla Scuticchio), Coghlan, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Area: 80 m². Completed: 2024. Photography: Luis Barandarián.

About the Studio

Estudio NU

Official website of Estudio NU, one of the studios behind this project.

estudio-nu.com

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